Apologies in advance for the quote/response ratio. I like to be clear as I can manage.
I meant to say that enjoyment is pushed on us as the raison d'etre for existence but that it shouldn't be. I think that there's a kind of weird mystification going on, in which the culture tries to fool itself that it can stave off the threat of nihilism through adopting this attitude that consumerism saves us because it allows us to enjoy in spite of, and deny or defeat nihilism. IMO nihilism is part of the path we must embark on to liberate ourselves from being harvested as human commodities for the profit of the managers of our addictions and needs.
Are the people constituting culture, by whatever distinct divisions we want to draw, aware of this? Is nihilism even a natural progression? I'm something of an agnostic myself, though I try to resist classification. And, in the case of consumerism, existing participation doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing argument not to attempt difference.
When I said "for an organism addicted to oxygen, death is the only form of sobriety possible" what I meant was that while we are alive we will always be addicted to something, and always be slightly intoxicated by the world. Death IMO is a preferable state of being, and it is the only absolute in our lives and the only permanent liberation. Much suffering has been caused by the refusal to accept this fact. But if we accept it, then we can develop both compassion and an armour of knowledge that allows us to resist the madness and much of the pointless suffering and violence in the world.
There is a
thread 
.
Death being the only absolute, I want to live - despite being adamant about denying immortality beyond a couple centuries.
The only other consensus I hear on this planet is that people live... lives were lived before us and lives will be lived after and so, for me, every effort must be made to make living better. And I'm not suggesting an ineffable better at some point in the future, I'm talking better than now cause everyone can agree that now has become truly ridiculous. We waste an incredible amount of our only real bartering chip (our brain) as a species to maintain this degree of apathy.
Which, brings us back to point and task. You've qualified 'intoxication' as a natural state (which reflects a minority literature suggesting that intoxication is a 'drive' like thirst or hunger). I've responded that at a certain level of description all interaction between the brain and the environment enacts chemical and electrical transmission like any other conscious state, including taking drugs (the argument continues that drugs add or detract something but so does sustenance, fear, sleep - if the state of the brain is chemical and electrical, changing it by those mechanisms is still a state of the brain?)
A detriment to a single human is a loss to us all. As a culture and society we embody and enact the reactions to the reality of living.
In the UK reporting negative, frustrated or generally nihilistic emotional states is grounds for psychiatric incarceration. Once there, you will eventually report the positive mental attitude the authorities want, or you won't leave.
The emotional realities of life, particularly for the proles, are too offensive to the dominant ideology of positive thinking for its own sake and absolute denial of the nihilistic implications of existence. We all have a duty to censor any expression of negativity with hope and a kind of wistful 'oh well it will all be ok if i just believe' type attitude.
That sounds particularly difficult in the UK but I feel that "censoring" attitude is prevalent in the Western Empire. But there are plenty of immediate cultural distinctions that quickly transcend that attitude in communication as well.
This is demanded by a psychiatric establishment that over medicates people with SSRI's ... Therefore consumption becomes a moral issue, when it is bad for us we must blame ourselves, and we must always believe that we need only believe in goodness and we can do it right in the future.
Vested interests and polarizing propoganda. It's not easy to do right by ourselves and it takes effortful practice. But it is on us to be informed and participate. There definitely should be a involved society, which constantly re-prioritizes how it wants to facilitate its constituents.
We are forced to believe in a maladaptive enlightenment fallacy that stretches individual autonomy into the realms of the supernatural. We are supposed to be subjects that only encounter reality after causally deliberating over it ... It's dangerous and damaging, but finding the truth is almost impossible in the noisey media deluge of junk science and hypo manic idiots advertising scams and faking positive consumer feedback on their websites.
We're definitely fed a certain perception - but we can fight for change, neh? I'm perfectly capable of believing that I'm back to black when my mortal form passes and still wanting to make a difference in the living realm while I'm here.
Instead of understanding the mechanical processes causing our diet and sobriety fails, we think of it in terms of guilt and discipline! That to me is evil. We think we can conjure attitudes out of thin air that will override reality itself.
Distinctions, nothing more. Disseminate clearer communication.
Of course, this arises because we don't have conscious access to such processes, our introspection and consciousness only provides the faintest data about what is going into our bodies and what the brain is doing. The brain produces thoughts, but we are never permitted to understand these thoughts as emanating from anything other than a supernatural construct - the self, which doesn't really exist!
I apologize as I strive to respond practically. I feel you're asking deeper questions...
Only a techno scientific understanding of ourselves as machines can help us. We must understand the truth of what we input into our bodies, and realize that this creates data which online communities can help us interpret. Only science can save us from becoming rats moving coins around the urban cage to get a cheap and dangerous dopamine hit.
Hrm. Science is constituted of real people with vested interests. And it's on the wrong side of a socioeconomic class distinction for most of us.
I think you understand that we can't simply resist this with prohibition. The only way out is through. Smarter drugs - an end to the mystical hedonistic attitude that dominates drug culture - a sub culture of neuro modification, health, healing, performance and expansion. We can dream of a future in which we develop new hardware for the brain and body. We can use it to meditate, for security, to play the financial markets, for performativity, or just to experience novel neurophysiologies. But we must resist the demand to use it to exhaust and damage ourselves in addiction.
I think you might fixated on a single dimension of the problem. It just isn't this simply.
Someone who has been made obese by junk food, or given diabetes and massive weight gain by SSRI's they don't need, someone who smokes themselves until disease and death, who becomes alcoholic, all are victims of their brains being hacked. Their suffering can at least show us the necessity to take control of our own neuro chemistry. To tend to our brains like a garden or a machine. To monitor and control what is inputted and record and compare the data of the effects. To develop a sub culture of technical modifcation, through software (memes, substances, experiences) and hardware (implants, tcds machines, new types of jewellry/accessories etc.)
Again, are you railing against the plebletariot's ignorance, the complacency of experts (family doctors, Lay's Chips, the Breweries, Starbucks, Kollisch/Hofmann), the legislation that makes them all possible, or Hammurabi's Code in the first place (by which I just meant codified laws of civilization and their philosophic necessity to keep us from the worst of us?)
This has turned into rants which are extremely subjective in nature.
While I don't think we've strayed all that much, I do think that the subjective straying keeps the conversation rich in profited wisdom. Greater chance of revelation
. Plus, is this not how all societies affect change, by a handful of individuals on the intraweb
?
Although I agree with much of what James is saying,it is also just a subjective understanding of the nature of reality.There are tons of those out there.Which of those are true?Either none or everyone.No objective understanding exists,so we are left with sharing our subjective ones I guess.
The bold seems to reflect the consumerist outcry that james' has nicely articulated. But is it the only response?
No it is not the only response,but it is the one that is most visible,and because it is so visible,it makes sense to use that as a reason.
Who knows what is going on inside billions of brains? IMO I think this goes much deeper than consumerism.
We're all aspects of the phenomenon in question. james is, in fact, offering a sample perspective of the kind of mind that turns towards satiation in unadvised dietary choices or medicating chemically. To approach this specific crux from a different angle, what are other alternative explanations as to why people turn to drugs in the first place - if not wrestling with some kind of existential angst that james describes (whether it's an actually embodied mindset is a completely different story - few can adopt the sincerity of Peter Stormare in
The Big Lebowski: "We’re Nihilists. We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing.")
One way to look at it is that we have distanced ourselves more and more from what we know we are,namely nature.Maybe that makes us sick,and we behave irrationally and create this unsane civilization because we have to destroy,violate and consume the planet the keep the machine going.To me,getting out of the city worked for me.Surrounded by wilderness and animals,I have again found the peace I need to cope with existence.Am I running away? Maybe,but I needed to do something,or else I would literally loose my mind.To be part of a society is like taking part in a game.You choose to participate.There are people who chose not to participate(ascetics),and they exist just as much people who play the game does.Maybe there are ways the western civilization can be "saved" but I am not hopeful.
I applaud you, Royce, and many in my country adopt the same perspective towards the same end. But not participating isn't an option for me. The game is everywhere now. You can flee to the mountains but damn sure the world is going to come knocking before long.
Royce, I've seen the attitude you have articulated quite a lot recently and I've always been somewhat skeptical of it.
However, I'd agree with you that getting out of the city, getting 'back to nature' etc. is not only an extremely healthy and therapeutic thing to do, it's probably one of the easiest ways to heal someones nerves and psyche and prevent a breakdown.
...
we should see all these things as engineering problems.
You don't need nature because we are already so close to technically replicating all the functions nature provides - free heat, energy from the sun, soil and space to grow crops etc. with small scale personal technology. Certainly, the life you speak of has tremendous merits, however I worry about the regressive tendencies that sometimes manifest within it.
What does it mean to go back to nature other than to seek free but rapidly obsolescing sources of sustenance and energy?
I forgot to mention that I am not at all against technological inventions that improve aspects of existence,and make us less dependent on destroying the planet.I am not at all saying that everyone should start walking backwards,but are things better as they are now?
Aren't you discussing aspects of the same proposal? It is rare that someone in a self-sufficient living condition relies on a balance of technology and nature - harvesting solar energy seems the exemplar of what you are describing, james, that technologies should work to be displace relatively little that exists already?
Anyone check out
Earthships? Great documentary to go along with it.
We now have enjoyment right in front of our noses 24/7 with gadgets in numerable forms.I can`t really see there is going to arrive any kind of global awakening where everyone realizes that this hunger for enjoyment is wrong.The reason for that is that most people do not agree with you.They love this lifestyle more than anything else.Comfort is the new drug.
Isn't it satisfying to freestyle alternatives, though? The world can be different. And, in my opinion, practically identifying the whys and the wherefores of the way things are is one of a number of places to being seeking the way things could be.
I have to cut this a little short, though there wasn't much else in the final posts by either of you, which compelled me to respond.
I have no issue with continue the discussion as trends but, though it is inextricably intwined in the conversation for qualify why people turn to drugs, I might make a separate topic.
